Fishtrap Presents: Exploring Flash Forms of Writing

Fishtrap Presents:  At The Edge: Exploring Flash Forms of Writing with Nathan Slinker.
 

In her essay, “On Miniatures,” Lia Purpura writes that “miniatures are the familiar, reduced to unfamiliarity. They are feats of engineering. Causes to marvel. Surprises.” In this workshop, we’ll explore various short forms (flash fiction, micro-essays, and prose poems) and discuss how the concision and focus demanded by flash forms create urgency, drama, excitement—something marvelous, something surprising. At the edge of genre, we can capture the orchard green through a pinhole, follow the loops of planets inside a shoebox—and the techniques you take away from writing flash will help lend poignancy and lyricism to any style of writing you practice.

Nathan Slinker has participated in many Fishtrap workshops and events, and in 2013 he was selected as a Summer Fishtrap Fellow. In 2014 he received an MFA from Arizona State University, where he taught poetry and English composition courses. His poetry has been published in many national journals including Third Coast, Mid-American Review, and Kenyon Review Online. A limited-run chapbook, Nineteen Windows and a Door: poems from the Black Mountain Fire Lookout, was published in 2015.